For a while, I’ve had an interest in working with Fiber Optics and LEDs. Below, I am proposing three concepts that will utilize fiber optics to enhance flower designs.
Concept 1: Flower Bed
Description: The idea behind this flower bed is similar to a home design version of a sprawling field of flowers. In the darkness of night, the flowers will emit a warm light at their centers, dimly illuminating their surroundings and bringing the color of their petals forward. With just the light from the flowers, the vague outline of each individual stalk of “grass” will become visible, but remain obscure in the background. By “home design,” I will be placing these flowers in a rectangular flower pot. The ratio of “flowers” to “grass” will be around 1:5 (20%), with the stalks of the grass utilizing edge-emitting fiber optics with a low voltage LED to keep the grass in the background, but bring their presence into existence. The lights from each flower could “sparkle” or change-colors based on user interaction. Using either multiple IR sensors or the EL wire sound-activated pocket inverter, the corresponding flowers would either glow brighter, or gradually change color based on user input.
Materials: For the flowers, I will be using paper tissues wrapped around a 0.75 mm end-emitting fiber optic to create the flower top, with dark green tissue wrapping a layer around the stalk, to ensure light insulation as it travels to the tip of the optical fiber. For the grass stalks, I will use 0.25 mm or 0.5 mm edge-emitting fiber optics, wrapped with a thin layer of green tissue paper to both dim the light even further and bring out the green color of traditional grass. I will also need programmable RGB LEDs.
Concept 2: Bouquet of Flowers
Description: Similar to the above concept, this focuses on a few single flowers and rather than using the end-emitting optical fiber as a source of light in the center of the flower, I would be weaving fiber optics into the petals, similar to the idea on the right. For this concept, the flower would need to be much larger and made of a sturdier material. I plan to use tulle’s natural netting to weave the optical fibers, with a thin, malleable wire to shape the petals and an overlaying light fabric for visual purposes. The optical fibers within the flowers would change in colors or change in brightness based on either user input (similar to the concept above) or on a preset selection of patterns.
Concept 3: Wall of Vines
Description: Using the same concept of fiber optic weaving with tulle, I want to create a wall of flowers, mimicking this wall of vines, like color leaching onto a canvas. The vines would be using edge-emitting optical fibers with a dim LED, while the leaves (which would be speckled with flowers) would be using the end-emitting optical fibers. Again, I would like to incorporate some form of user input, whether that is sound-activated, heat-activated, or motion-activated. The idea is that the lights would transition from the right to the left, either changing colors in a wave, or starting dim and with user input, create a wave of light from the leaves and diminishing at the vines.
